Rock-climber Chris Sharma smiles as he clings on to a wall at the grand opening of Sender One Climbing, an indoor rock climbing gym in Santa Ana. that Sharma designed.

A climber clings to an oddly-shaped structure at the grand opening of Sender One Climbing, while spectators watch. The indoor rock climbing gym was recently designed and opened by Chris Sharma in Santa Ana.

Climbers ascend oddly-shaped structures at the grand opening of Sender One Climbing, an indoor rock climbing gym that Chris Sharma designed and recently opened in Santa Ana.

Sierra Blair-Coyle clings onto a wall at Sender One Climbing, an indoor rock climbing gym that recently opened in Santa Ana. Blair-Coyle, and the gym's founder, Chris Sharma, are both sponsored by Irvine-based footwear company Sanuk, whech provided a grass-like waiting area for the new facility.

Rock-climber Chris Sharma recently opened Sender One Climbing, an indoor rock climbing gym in Santa Ana. Sharma also designed the gym.

Sender One Climbing, an indoor rock-climbing gym, opened last week in Santa Ana. The gym was designed by rock-climber Chris Sharma, who also owns the facility along with three partners. They say that the facility is “nearly twice the size and height of any other indoor climbing facility in Los Angeles and Orange County.”

“It has been a longtime dream of mine to build a climbing gym,” said Sharma, who grew up climbing in a gym in Santa Cruz. The team behind Sender One has been working on the project for three years.

The Orange County location was chosen partially because the landlord believed in Sender One’s business plan, according to Wesley Shih, Sharma’s business partner and part-owner of the new facility. “Climbing gyms are kind of novel, and the landlord was willing to make some major modifications,” Shih said. The property owner, Mission Viejo-based Makena Properties, agreed to raise the roof of the building to accommodate 50-foot walls.

The gym also has 25,000 square feet of climbing space, a general fitness area, yoga studio and several training, climbing and fitness classes. It will host parties and corporate team-building events, and an area designed for children as young as6 years old is scheduled to open later this month.

Sharma’s corporate sponsors added some design elements to the facility, including the grass area, which was provided by Irvine-based footwear company Sanuk.

“It was important for Chris to give back to the community and create the next generation of climbers,” Shih said. To do that, the team has already begun to scout out Southern California locations for future Sender One locations.

“Right now we’re focused on making this place the best that it could be, but we definitely want to open more,” Shih said.

On the move

Identive Group Inc., a secure ID company in Santa Ana, is beefing up it government solutions team, which gives security advice to the company’s government partners and clients. Rich Anderson is a new government sales manager. He was previously a sales director at Vumii Imaging, based in Atlanta. Jeff Ogborn has been promoted to government project manager, after working for three years at Hirsch, another Identive company.

Identive also hired Bernice Noriz as director of sales in North America for its access-control and security division. Noriz previously worked as business development manager for Torrance-based AMAG Technology.

New ventures

Surf Investments Ltd., an Irvine-based mobile-computing repair company that operates under the name Computer Systems and Solutions, has been acquired by E-Waste Systems Inc., an electronic-waste company based in London. All Surf employees will be retained, and the business will stay intact, operating as E-Waste Systems (CA). The Irvine location will serve as E-Waste’s Southern California operational hub and as a management center for its U.S. and global operations. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Panattoni Development Company Inc., a Newport Beach-based real estate development firm, will develop the Des Moines Creek Business Park on roughly 87 acres south of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington. The firm was recently chosen by the Port of Seattle to build the multi-phase project, which will be used for airport-related commercial and light industrial purposes, over a seven-year period that will start as soon as next year.

Nielsen Expositions, a tradeshow operator based in San Juan Capistrano, has been bought by Canadian private equity firm Onex Corp. for $950 million in cash. Onex immediately changed the name of company, formerly a division of The Nielsen Company, to Emerald Expositions Inc.

Milestones

The Orange County Public Relations Society of America recently handed out 52 trophies to 20 companies that were honored during the organization’s 38th annual Protos Awards held at Lyon Air Museum in Santa Ana. Irvine-based Citizen Paine and Orange-based Westbound Communications each walked away with eight awards, more than any other company. The Orange County Register sponsored the event and vice president Steve Churm served as emcee.

Ormco Corp., an orthodontic product manufacturer based in Orange, received the 2013 “American Technology Award” in health and medical technologies from TechAmerica Foundation for its “Insignia Advanced Smile Design” orthodontics software. The foundation, a nonprofit research affiliate of the TechAmerica technology-industry association based in Washington, D.C., selected Insignia for improving the delivery of health services.

UC Irvine was recently the recipient of a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as part of a series of grants awarded to 13 institutions for a total of $4.3 million. The work at UCI will help improve management of air quality by researching how natural and man-made particles mix in the atmosphere.

Talia E. Shandling, an attorney at Klinedinst PC‘s Santa Ana office, was included in a list of “rising stars” published by Southern California Super Lawyers magazine. The list recognizes up-and-coming legal professionals.

Overheard

“Cloud computing, however you define it, is not revolutionary.” – Mike Jochimsen, senior partner and alliances manager at Costa Mesa-based Emulex Corp., making a case in a blog post that new technologies co-exist with old technologies instead of displacing them.

Former reporter, editor and web developer Kevin Sablan is the Register's digital MacGyver. He creates web-based gadgets that stretch the capabilities of tools used to present words, images and links on phones, tablets and computers.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.